1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a defect inspecting apparatus detecting defects such as cracks in an optical recording area of an optical recording medium having a regularly disposed regular pattern.
2. Description of the Related Art
In optical recording media such as an optical card accessing data by means of a laser beam, malfunctions at the time of data access are prevented by carrying out an inspection as to whether defects such as cracks are present in the optical recording area or not before actually writing data on or using the optical recording area.
Hitherto, although the inspection of the optical recording area of this type has been carried out by means of optical instruments such as a microscope, there are problems in that the inspection requires much labor and accurate results can not be obtained.